Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/46

34 as his ideal of modern gentleness and modern manhood, never (unfortunately for us, and most unfortunately for himself) had the remotest conception of what gentleness meant, or what manhood meant. It is to be added that nothing more essentially unmodern, more false to every notion we possess of true morality and true justice, has been written in our time, and perhaps in any time.

Into the 'sunless gulfs' of Lord Tennyson's drama-turgie it is happily not necessary to descend. No one has taken them seriously except Lord Tennyson; and every one has wondered what on earth urged him on to such desperate courses. He had not the slightest gift for characterisation. In his narrative and lyric work he had not succeeded in animating one single original figure with the unmistakable gift of individuality. His best work in this direction had been done in such pieces as 'Lucretius,' 'Ulysses,' 'The Dream of Fair Women,' where (to use Arnold's phrase) 'the subject-matter had been found for him.' The figures in his plays labour under the added disadvantage of his complete inability to write dramatic blank verse. What shall be said of stuff like this when gravely produced by a man of